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Fish Adapting to Pollution

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Okay, this is way outside my area of expertise, but I thought this was really interesting. It seems that some organisms can adapt to what would normally be lethal levels of chemical pollutants. A paper published in Science reports that genetic adaptions in the Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) allow it to survive what, in unpolluted environments, would be lethal levels of bioaccumulative dioxin-like contaminants. The authors suggest that the killifish is able to adapt rapidly due to its large population sizes and high levels of genetic diversity.